#artwork is a detail from granville redmond’s painting ‘moonlight along the coast’ (c. 1918)

[zorosdimples]

BETWEEN YOU AND ME (AND THE SEA)

pairing ༄ zoro x gn!reader

warnings ༄ suggestive content (this takes place after sex). slight angst that ends in sweet comfort. brief descriptions of violence and wounds. love as religion/love as worship.

word count ༄ 911

notes ༄ this fic is just an insanely intense pillow talk session with my favorite man (i don’t know how to be normal). it’s brimming with love. please enjoy!

p.s. i use the word “bokken” to denote a wooden practice sword.

“i would die for you.”

your breath caresses zoro’s heaving chest, his tawny skin damp, glistening under the moon’s pearly glow. the air is still in the crow’s nest; the only sound to disturb the lulling midnight is the gentle lap of the wine-dark sea.

it takes the swordsman several moments to process your words, his mind still hazy from the events of your shared watch. one wide palm rests on the soft curve of your lower back while he absentmindedly strokes the arch of your neck.

“hm?” zoro belatedly rumbles, brows knit in confusion.

you raise your head to meet your lover’s steel gaze. the look in your eye—zoro knows it well. beneath the heady cloud of contentment is the crazed glint of worship, shining like a honed blade. it’s a look that both terrifies him in its depth and comforts him in its earnestness.

will he ever be worthy of your devotion?

“i’m not particularly brave or strong,” you start, a fingertip etching love into his flesh as you trace the jagged edges of the scar that slashes across his torso—the ghost of an injury that almost took him from you.

“but i would do anything for you, zo. i would die for you. and it should scare me, that i feel so deeply.” your finger stills, hovering above his heart, beat steadfast as the foamy tide. “but when it comes to you? i lose all my inhibitions. i would die for you in an instant.”

even in the dusky quiet, zoro’s hands are broad and warm as the sun. they are an extension of his weapons, instruments of death. yet he cradles your cheeks with devastating care as he pulls your face to his own. his jaw flexes resolutely as he grits out, “don’t say shit like that.”

“not saying it doesn’t make it any less true,” you murmur.

few things scare the swordsman; he knows death’s face, having brushed shoulders with the endless ether more times than he can count. when he dreams, he wades through a river of ichor as asura, violence incarnate.

but your vulnerability frightens him—how you lay your heart bare and expect nothing in return.

the way you live goes against everything zoro has ever known, against his basest instincts to keep his emotions close to his chest, to fight the burden of existence with blood in his maw, to survive at any cost.

(it’s a bitter january evening and snow flurries paint the eaves of the dojo white. zoro’s stomach growls, hunger gnawing at his intestines. his young, scrawny limbs ache with overuse. the room is frigid; his simple robe is not nearly enough to keep the color in his cheeks.

this dreaded overnight practice is punishment for pilfering onigiri from the kitchen several days prior. hunger is but a distraction for the weak. he must repent with grueling drills. but in the middle of an overhead swing, he loses feeling in his arms, the bokken clattering to his feet.

his sensei tsks in disappointment. “the way of the sword is absolute, roronoa. you eat and sleep and breathe by the blade. the second you lose focus—the moment you lose sight of what is important—you will cease to be a swordsman.”

tears of frustration prick the young boy’s eyes, but he holds his tongue, picking up the bokken without sound or complaint. he doesn’t realize that his palms are cracked and that the wooden hilt is stained sanguine. he continues training until dawn.)

zoro licks his chapped lips. his tongue is always loose when it’s just the two of you and the sea. “i’m not worth it.”

a frown pinches your features. adorable, he wants to say as you wrap your arms around his neck with a huff.

“what makes you think your life is worth any less than luffy’s? than chopper’s? than mine?”

zoro assesses you for a moment, feline eye unreadable. he measures his words with unusual care. “my role is to protect. it was—it is—my vow to luffy.”

threading your fingers through his mint tresses, you tug, concern rolling off of you in waves. “then who’s left to protect you, zo?”

his mind answers without hesitation: no one. (the little boy with the bloodstained bokken weeps.)

“let me protect you,” you entreat, lips brushing his, ardent as a prayer.

the fates, in their divine and impartial wisdom, must have made a grave mistake: spinning the claret thread of your fate, meting it out, and mistakenly intertwining it with the swordsman’s. zoro is certain that it’s a miscarriage of justice—not that the gods have ever been preoccupied with fairness.

did he do something in a past life to deserve your reverence?

“i can’t,” he breathes. but his iron resolve is rusting, fissures compromising the once-gleaming surface.

“you can.”

zoro has never considered himself to be a good man. you are eager to give, and he wants nothing more than to receive. he drinks in your affection so greedily that he doesn’t notice how his lone eye burns when he claims your lips with his own, heartfelt i love yous exchanged between spit and tongue.

the tears are silent as they drip down his freckled cheek; you swipe each of them away with a thumb before dotting kisses across his salty flesh. zoro has half a mind to be embarrassed—swordsmen don’t cry.

but if there is one absolute truth in this cursed world, it’s this: his heart is safe with you and you alone.

#artwork is a detail from granville redmond’s painting ‘moonlight along the coast’ (c. 1918) #zoro x reader #one piece x reader #zoro <3 #༄ kae writes